[WIP] Modular medieval Environment [CE3]

3dcaspar

Hi dear Polycounters,
So at the moment i am working on another Portfoliopiece.
Hopefuly i could made some progress sine my last modular tryout ^^

Well, i'm using CryEngine3 (at the moment the ground textures are just placeholders, as i will do them at the very end. The terrain itself is also not finished)

I hope you can give me some critique/advice on this!
Since i'm not really sure which lighting i should use, i made three variations. (personally i like number 1 the most)
What do you think? Do you think it's too much fog in there? ^^

I will do about two more houses with some more variation and afterwards go on modelling some marketplace items (boxes, barrels, maybe a water well)

Thanks in advance!

3dcaspar

So after a while i decided to change the environment a little.
Here is the update.

Any form of crits is welcome! ;D

sltrOlsson

Great stuff man! Nice jump from your first post

Over all it looks very saturated and clean. That's the biggest things that first popps into my mind. It looks a lot like an movie set at the moment, like it's just placed there. No real grunge and stuff like that.

Maybe add some ground plants, bushes and grass?

Do something more with the background. Some bigger mountains and shit far away. You can really tell that it's nothing more then those trees atm.

And i have to say that that tree in the foreground is bugging me. The branches got no real connection with the trunk.

I feel that you can do something more with the weather to. It's very dull atm. Which i guess rainy weather is, but still. Maybe some other sky to?

But really, great work! Keep at it and this will be a killer!!

For some magnificent inspiration: This and this

leleuxart

Nice environment! I think the lighting needs to be toned down though. It looks like its raining, but the lighting, in my opinion, shouldn't be so overblown and bright. Normally, with cloudy days, the sky is bright, but the light isn't so dominant. It's more of an ambient light that doesn't cast such sharp shadows.

3dcaspar

Hey and thanks for the nice comments!
I'm really happy that u guys like it!

For the tree: this was my first attempt ever at doing foliage, and you're right, it definitely needs more work.

Will change the lighting and sky tomorrow, i see what you mean by that.
Maybe i'm gonna do some sort of image-on-a-plane mountain for the background..

Thank you very much for the crits and motivational words! ;D

David-J

Cool. It's looking really good. I really like the terrain texture work. Can you post some images of the modular assets you are using.

ivanzu

This is looking awesome but maybe decrease the fog a bit.

3dcaspar

So here is a new update:
- weather changed a bit
- lighting changed
- background changed
- skycolor changed
- did some more color adjustments
- added some depth of field

Thanks for all the nice comments so far!

@David-J: The last screenshot out of max will show you all the assets i used (except the tree and grass). Pretty simple stuff i think ^^ but effective in the engine..

What do you think about the new lighting etc.?







I made a quick new version (color, sunlight changes). Which one do you like more?

e-freak

wow, that's looking fantastic

Kratilim

New lighting look sinteresting. Houses look nice. But the plants and the trees don't look up to par with the houses. I'd look into those. But it looks promising!

snow

you should really bake an AO into the vertex colours of those houses, it would add a lot, good job!

ParoXum

It's raining but your roof and the rest still seems dry.

Get a cubemap in there if not yet done and add water puddles on the terrain

I'm not a fan of your pine trees but it's doing correct job atm.

Keep it up, you made good progress since first post.

sltrOlsson

Cool stuff! Didn't really konw what to think at first, but this weather really gives the scene a mysterious fell to it!

Like ParoXum said, get some puddles in there, some rainy roofs to keep things unified.

Then i think that you should address the tree, it doesn't look to happy :P

[HP]

Definitely not bad, here's a couple hints.

It's raining, yet everything looks dull and dry, the rain entity will only do part of the work, you have to edit all your materials just so they look wet, increase the glossiness and tweak your frenel values, and you might wanna retweak your spec/gloss maps too.

The vegetation still needs some work, are you using the vegetation shader? There's definitely something wrong with your materials, it might be the lack of AA in the shots tho.
That tree needs some further work, you can tell the planes are reusing the same texture, you can simply put more of those on there, and give the planes some variety too, just so it looks less gamey.


Some of the textures are extremly blurry at steep angles, are you using very high spec? If so, you might wanna add some anisotropic filtering to your materials, especially those rooftops, here's how:


I'm noticing that at the moment you are lacking direction for your compositon and lighting, you might wanna have a look at this link: http://www.conceptroot.com/ult/
Choose a good color pallete, and stick with it!

I'm loving the creepy look, I would try and push it further, also don't forget to do a proper composition pass, foreground and background work are as important as your middle ground, somethign along the lines of this:


I love this article, you might wanna check it out too:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/135/120/index.php

Cheers dude, keep up the good work!

3dcaspar

dude thanks a lot for that awesome feedback! ;D
atm i'm having some trouble with the rain entity,... but i think i'm gonna rework the tree first and then go back to the final composition.

that tip with tweaking the materials to fit the rainy weather is really what i needed didn't think about that.

thanks a lot!!

3dcaspar

So i made some changes to the rain and materials.
Is this going in a better direction?
I will redo the tree tomorrow...

ParoXum

Do you have a cubemap/environment probe in your scene right now?

Because your roof might be reflective enough to have a spec dot across the surface but what will really sell it is an actual reflection of the environment.

http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC2/Environment+Probes

3dcaspar

No, never did this before.

Will have a look at it tomorrow, thanks a lot for the link!

If i get it working correctly ^^

[HP]

Definitely always use a env cubemap encompassing the entirety of your scene

3dcaspar

As i never did this before i have one more question regarding the environment probe:
Do i set only one environment probe in the middle of the level and assign this cubemap to all objects, or do i set one environment probe for each object and assign it to the related model?

ParoXum

The env probe will apply to all materials in its area of effect. Just make sure you place it where the reflection is gonna look interesting, and not into a building or tru a wall/ground object.

The engine will do the rest. For a start render it in 512 already and you'll notice a difference.

3dcaspar

Well here is the last update...
I call this finished for now

I decided to take one night shot and one day shot for my portfolio.
Thanks to all of you for your super effective comments and help!! ;D






Cheers!

Ark

For the night shot, use a dark blue/purple rather than just darkening the scene and hiding all the details you've put in. It'll add more variation and contrast to the orange torches.